beaches

. I have spent the past few days relaxing on the beach and processing some aspects of our time here. I feel like I just got back from a mini-vacation, it was lovely! The beaches here are so beautiful and every sunset/sunrise is like watching a masterpiece be worked right in front of your very eyes. The crystal blue waters, lush green palm trees, flowers of many colors and blue skies all around. The sound of the waves beating against the shore. It was a rhythm that my soul needed. I needed to feel the Lord like that and to hear Him. This retreat was a lot about how we have seen our time here and questions to be thinking about as we re-enter our lives back home. Home has seemed to far away for so long that it feels impossible to try to put myself back in that life. I have been asked many time lately how I am doing with the prospects of coming home. When asked this question, every emotion imaginable runs through my heart. I am looking forward to being HOME, to seeing my family and all of you that I love so dearly. But there are a lot of questions that are unanswered for me right now. I dearly love my friends here and I love living among and being among the poor. I have to figure out what that will look like at home. Also there is the impending decision about a job. That is not so exciting or inviting to come home to but I trust the Lord that it will work out. This retreat was really good for me because it made me think about howI have changed and then also think about all that has changed at home. There are some exciting thing that I am coming home to and some not to exciting things. I hope that I have grown and changed from my time here, so it will be a new experience to be home among the changes being the new me. I am coming off of these few days away with an excitement to end this last week well and enjoy the time here but also I am excited to take home what I have learned and who I have become. I just hope you all have patience with me as I figure out what all this means.

Ms. Whiny Pants

Wow, was my last entry whiny or what?! Good grief. Sorry about using the blog space to be little Ms. Whiny Pants. I thought I was being a little bit better of a trouper than that...yikes! So, quick health update and then onto new things. Still not at 100%. That cold I mentioned, turned into a sinus infection and double ear infection. This is actually a prayer request because I cannot hear out of my left ear very well. However, all in all, I am doing a little better each day. Still don't have an appetite but I cannot say that is the worst thing to loose :P Okay, enough about all that!

So, folks, two weeks from today (Lord willing) I will be setting foot on my native, Nebraska frozen soil. There are a flood of emotions that sweep over me when I think of home. Mostly they are the sadness and grief that I feel over leaving Freetown and the people that I have grown to love so deeply. One of the Lighthouse kids asked me if I ever honestly plan to come to see them again. That is such a hard question. Yes, I plan on saying coming back to visit, at the very least, but we never know what tomorrow holds. My heart tells me it is not good-bye forever, but I wonder if that is just a fool's hope! Other emotions are a little bit of fear of coming back and trying to reintegrate back into Western life. I am afraid of forgetting what I have grown to be passionate about here and the revelations the Lord has given me about the poor and living simply. Our culture is just so busy and hectic, it is so easy to loose sight of the important things. I am saying this from experience and I am not trying to bash our culture. We just have so many distractions from what matters. I do have to admit that I am looking forward to being home for Christmas (not the crazy consumer driven holiday hoopla but the cozy family centered time of the year centering on the most amazing thing that ever happened in our history!). And I am looking forward to being cold...not sure what that is like anymore! Those are just a few of the emotions that keep running through my heart. There are many more but my blog spot is not big enough for all of them and I am sure you don't have time to read about them all!!

We changed our plane tickets and so we will be staying in Freetown two more days instead of being stuck in London for 2 days. I am excited about this but it also is like post-poning an operation. It is good because the pain is put off for two more days but on the other hand you have two more days to think about how painful it is going to be. Well, that is how a pessimist would look at it, so it is a good thing that I am not a pessimist! :P I cannot imagine what life without Jesus would be like! I have such a peace and a hope in Him. I have no idea what I am going to do for a job, if I am supposed to live here or not, what my life at home should look like, even if my hearing will every fully come back but I just have a peace that I am in His hands. Is He not just the BEST! I am so overwhelmed with how amazing He is!!

Well, I am off. I will not post probably until next weekend or even next week sometime. We are off to a short little two day retreat and then we get back and hit the ground running. Will try to post when I can!